Pros:New capabilities are nicely integrated; powerfulCons:Difficult to re-order fieldsBottom Line:Enterprise Studio can integrate well into your existing project infrastructure and provide good support for connecting to common version-control packages.

Enterprise development today requires a lot more than coding. Aiming to tackle the entire software development cycle, Borland Enterprise Studio 7 for Java ($6,500 direct) takes the already strong JBuilder X Enterprise compiler tool and adds solid UML diagramming abilities, Web service support, refactoring, and a standout profiler. Moreover, these new capabilities are nicely integrated into a popular IDE that still earns points for everyday coding productivity.

Enterprise Studio supports Windows, Linux, and Solaris. You need at least 512MB of RAM to run Enterprise Studio, and 768MB is recommended. We tested on Windows XP and were up and running in around 40 minutes. The core JBuilder X compiler is on two CDs; another one adds design support with Borland's Together modeling tool.

Additional components for enterprise development include Borland Enterprise Server (for a J2EE application server), and basic version control with Borland's StarTeam 5.2 Personal Edition (which comes with one user and one administrator license). Noteworthy extras include support for Sun ONE Application Server v. 7 (via a plug-in), and Altova's XMLSpy, a capable XML editor.

To test this suite, we simulated a typical development cycle for a J2EE Web application running a database to track a fleet of vehicles and drivers. We used Web services to expose key functionality to external systems. During testing, we found Enterprise Studio's modeling and add-on modules very well integrated into the IDE. Our first step was to create an entity relationship diagram outlining tables and fields visually. From here, a wizard let us import the logical design to its physical implementation on a database. The tool also generates the SQL scripts to create actual tables. Though it was difficult to re-order fields, the database design tools proved more than capable.

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is widely supported in Enterprise Studio, and the product features a good selection of diagram types, including use cases, state, activity, collaboration, deployment, and class diagrams. For each type of diagram, the visual design tool provides the appropriate set of widgets to draw with according to UML conventions. The look and feel is kept simple here, so you will need to know UML pretty well to use the tool effectively. At any time, you can generate HTML for one or all of your diagrams.

The class modeling capabilities deserve special mention because of their excellent support for software patterns, including the 23 well-known "Gang of Four" patterns, plus late-breaking J2EE designs recommended by Sun. The ability to generate complicated class relationships based on patterns using a wizard is a stellar feature that should put expert design in reach with a lot less effort.

For the coding phase of a project, JBuilder X is a major upgrade as a Java compiler. It has excellent support for designing Web services, with a well-thought-out and very usable designer that automatically creates WSDL and generates support classes to implement services. We used this feature to model a half-dozen SOAP calls for our test system. The wizard supports scanning EJBs and exposing them as Web services, too.

Several solid refactoring wizards let us change method names quickly, vary parameters, and move code around within a class hierarchy. A quality-assurance option runs checks and offers advice on fixing errors or tweaking your design and code. We liked that you can define project personalities, which hide certain features and tools so you're not overwhelmed with options. (IBM WebSphere Application Developer, which is a comparable compiler and tool, does swamp users with options.)

On the coding side, JBuilder X offers a nicely functional Struts wizard, which can definitely reduce the complexity of this popular framework for writing JSPs against controller and model Java classes. For debugging and testing code, the suite bundles Optimizeit 6.0, a profiler that generates detailed performance metrics.

Enterprise Studio can integrate well into your existing project infrastructure and provide good support for connecting to common version-control packages. You can import and export existing software design documents via XMI (an XML standard) to and from other modeling tools. System architects and software designers working in Java will find that Borland Enterprise Studio is a powerful tool that meets the challenges of today's enterprise development.

Richard V. Dragan, a contributing editor of PC Magazine, has written over 250 articles and reviews for the magazine and other Ziff Davis publications since 1992. From 1994 to 1998 he authored a programming column...

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